We study metrical properties of various subsequences associated to the sequence of rational approximants coming from the continued fraction of an irrational number. Our methods build upon Bosma, Jager and Wiedijk's proof of the Doblin-Lenstra conjecture as well as Jager's subsequent treatment of the sequence of approximation pairs.
Let F : P^N --> P^N be a dominant rational map. The dynamical degree of F is the quantity d_F = lim (deg F^n)^(1/n). When F is defined over a number field, we define the arithmetic degree of an algebraic point P to be a_F(P) = limsup h(F^n(P))^(1/n) and the canonical height of P to be h_F(P) = limsup h(F^n(P))/n^k d_F^n for an appropriately chosen integer k = k_F. In this article we prove some elementary relations and make some deep conjectures relating d_F, a_F(P), and h_F(P). We prove our conjectures for monomial maps.
We present a dynamical proof of the well-known fact that the Neron-Tate canonical height (and its local counterpart) takes rational values at points of an elliptic curve over a function field k of transcendence degree 1 over an algebraically closed field K of characteristic 0. More generally, we investigate the mechanism for which the local canonical height for a rational function f defined over k can take irrational values (at points in a local completion of k), providing examples in all degrees greater than 1. Building on Kiwi's classification of non-archimedean Julia sets for quadratic maps…
Let $d\ge 2$ be an integer, let $c(t)$ be any rational map, and let $f_t(z) := (z^d+t)/z$ be a family of rational maps indexed by t. For each algebraic number $t$, we let $h_{f_t}(c(t))$ be the canonical height of $c(t)$ with respect to the rational map $f_t$. We prove that the map $H(t):=h_{f_t}(c(t))$ (as $t$ varies among the algebraic numbers) is a Weil height.
Given two rational maps $φ$ and $ψ$ on $\PP^1$ of degree at least two, we study a symmetric, nonnegative-real-valued pairing $<φ,ψ>$ which is closely related to the canonical height functions $h_φ$ and $h_ψ$ associated to these maps. Our main results show a strong connection between the value of $<φ,ψ>$ and the canonical heights of points which are small with respect to at least one of the two maps $φ$ and $ψ$. Several necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the vanishing of $<φ,ψ>$. We give an explicit upper bound on the difference between the canonical height $h_ψ$ and the standard…
Let K be a function field, let f be a rational function of degree d at least 2 defined over K, and suppose that f is not isotrivial. In this paper, we show that a point P in P^1(Kbar) has f-canonical height zero if and only if P is preperiodic for f. This answers affirmatively a question of Szpiro and Tucker, and generalizes a recent result of Benedetto from polynomials to rational functions. We actually prove the following stronger result, which is a variant of the Northcott finiteness principle: there exists epsilon > 0 such that the set of points P in P^1(K) with f-canonical height at most …
Fix a rational basepoint b and a rational number c. For the quadratic dynamical system f_c(x) = x^2+c, it has been shown that the number of rational points in the backward orbit of b is bounded independent of the choice of rational parameter c. In this short note we investigate the dependence of the bound on the basepoint b, assuming a strong form of the Mordell Conjecture.
In this paper we investigate the behavior of trajectories of one class of rational $p$-adic dynamical systems in complex $p$-adic field $\C_p$. We studied Siegel disks and attractors of such dynamical systems. We found the basin of the attractor of the system. It is proved that such dynamical systems are not ergodic on a unit sphere with respect to the Haar measure.
We introduce and study algebraic dynamical systems generated by triangular systems of rational functions. We obtain several results about the degree growth and linear independence of iterates as well as about possible lengths of trajectories generated by such dynamical systems over finite fields. Some of these results are generalisations of those known in the polynomial case, some are new even in this case.
Let K be a function field in one variable over an arbitrary field F. Given a rational function f(z) in K(z) of degree at least two, the associated canonical height on the projective line was defined by Call and Silverman. The preperiodic points of f all have canonical height zero; conversely, if F is a finite field, then every point of canonical height zero is preperiodic. However, if F is an infinite field, then there may be non-preperiodic points of canonical height zero. In this paper, we show that for polynomial f, such points exist only if f is isotrivial. In fact, such K-rational points …
We compute a lower bound of the canonical height on quadratic twists of certain elliptic curves. Also we show a simple method for constructing families of quadratic twists with an explicit rational point. % from cubic polynomials. Using the above lower bound, we show that the explicit rational point is primitive as an element of the Mordell--Weil group.
Given a rational function of degree at least two defined over a number field k, we study the cardinality of the set of rational iterated preimages. We prove bounds for the cardinality of this set as the rational function varies in certain families. Our proofs are based on unit equations and a method of Runge for effectively determining integral points on certain affine curves. We also formulate and state a uniform boundedness conjecture for iterated preimages of rational functions and relate this conjecture to other well-known conjectures in arithmetic dynamics.
We prove an upper bound on the log canonical threshold of a hypersurface that satisfies a certain power condition and use it to prove several generalizations of Igusa's conjecture on exponential sums, with the log-canonical threshold in the exponent of the estimates. We show that this covers optimally all situations of the conjectures for non-rational singularities, by comparing the log canonical threshold with a local notion of the motivic oscillation index.
Let $K$ denote a number field and a finite set $S$ of places of $K$ and $ϕ:\PP^n\rightarrow\PP^n$ be rational morphism defined over $K$. The main result of this paper proves that there are only finitely many twists of $ϕ$ defined over $K$ which have good reduction at all places outside $S$. This answers a question of Silverman in the affirmative.
Let $f \in Q(z)$ be a polynomial or rational function of degree 2. A special case of Morton and Silverman's Dynamical Uniform Boundedness Conjecture states that the number of rational preperiodic points of $f$ is bounded above by an absolute constant. A related conjecture of Silverman states that the canonical height $\hat{h}_f(x)$ of a non-preperiodic rational point $x$ is bounded below by a uniform multiple of the height of $f$ itself. We provide support for these conjectures by computing the set of preperiodic and small height rational points for a set of degree 2 maps far beyond the range …
We show that if f is a nonzero, noninvertible function on a smooth complex variety X and J_f is the Jacobian ideal of f, then lct(f, J_f^2)>1 if and only if the hypersurface defined by f has rational singularities. Moreover, if this is not the case, then lct(f, J_f^2)=lct(f). We give two proofs, one relying on arc spaces and one that shows that the minimal exponent of f is at least as large as lct(f, J_f^2). In the case of a polynomial over the algebraic closure of Q, we also prove an analogue of this latter inequality, with the minimal exponent replaced by the motivic oscillation index moi(f)…
This paper gives two new combinatorial topological proofs of the classification of rational tangles. Each proof rests on an elegant lemma showing that rational tangles are isotopic to canonical alternating rational tangles. The first proof defines the tangle fraction from the canonical form and uses flyping to prove invariance. The second proof defines the fraction of a rational tangle via integral coloring of the tangle. The coloring method is then used to prove the Kauffman-Harary coloring conjecture for alternating knots and links in the case of rational knots and links (closures of rationa…
We prove that a positive proportion of squarefree integers are congruent numbers such that the canonical height of the lowest non-torsion rational point on the corresponding elliptic curve satisfies a strong lower bound.
We conjecture a lower bound for the minimal canonical height of non-torsion rational points on a natural density 1 subset of the sextic twist family of Mordell curves. We then establish a lower bound that yields a partial result towards this conjecture.
We prove the Dynamical Bogomolov Conjecture for endomorphisms of P^1\times P^1 defined over a number field. We use the equidistribution theorem for points of small height with respect to an algebraic dynamical system, combined with a theorem of Levin regarding symmetries of the Julia set. Using a specialization theorem of Yuan and Zhang, we prove the Dynamical Manin-Mumford Conjecture for endomorhisms of P^1\times P^1 defined over the complex numbers.
For one variable rational function $ϕ\in K(z)$ over a field $K$, we can define a discrete dynamical system by regarding $ϕ$ as a self morphism of $\mathbb{P}_{K}^{1}$. Hatjispyros and Vivaldi defined a dynamical zeta function for this dynamical system using multipliers of periodic points, that is, an invariant which indicates the local behavior of dynamical systems. In this paper, we prove the rationality of dynamical zeta functions of this type for a large class of rational functions $ϕ\in K(z)$. The proof here relies on Woods Hole fixed point formula and some basic facts on the trace of a li…
We present a practical algorithm to compute models of rational functions with minimal resultant under conjugation by fractional linear transformations. We also report on a search for rational functions of degrees 2 and 3 with rational coefficients that have many integers in a single orbit. We find several minimal quadratic rational functions with 8 integers in an orbit and several minimal cubic rational functions with 10 integers in an orbit. We also make some elementary observations on possibilities of an analogue of Szpiro's conjecture in a dynamical setting and on the structure of the set o…
We construct canonical heights of subvarieties for dynamical system of several morphisms associated with line bundles defined over a number field, and study some of their properties. We also construct invariant currents for such systems over $\mathbb{C}$.
Based on continued fractions with subtractions, we identify the set of real numbers with the set of infinite integer sequences with all terms but the first one greater or equal to two. Each such sequence produces in a canonical way a unique strictly decreasing Cauchy sequence of rationals which converges to the corresponding real number. The correspondence is such that the standard order of real numbers is translated to the lexicographic order of sequences.
We formulate a conjecture about the distribution of the canonical height of the lowest non-torsion rational point on a quadratic twist of a given elliptic curve, as the twist varies. This conjecture seems to be very deep and we can only prove partial results in this direction.
We define a new canonical height pairing on the rational points of elliptic curves over global function fields which takes values in the multiplicative group of a completion of the function field. This height serves as an analogue of both the classical Neron-Tate height and analytic p-adic heights. Our main result is that under some general hypotheses this pairing is non-degenerate.